Parallels to Salinger's Franny

I recently read JD Salinger's novel Franny and Zooey, and found Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar strinkingly similar in many ways. Salinger's novel is broken up into two sections, and Plath's novel parallels most closely with the Franny section of the novel. Franny, like Esther is what some would call a New York debutante, who is also attending an all womens college. The conflicts they experience in their heads and at school are very similar. Each women, respectively, is well known for their excellence in acadamia, though each has a sense that it will only take them so far, and is probably not their ultimate goal. Both women resent and rather dislike their Ivy League boyfriends, either out of hate for their hypocrisy and/or reasons left unknown to the readers. The detachment from weakness, in Franny's case the suicide of her older brother Seymour and in Esthers case, Buddy's illness (among other things), are both very similar. Both Salinger and Plath present these strong female characters, yet they have so many underlying weaknesses themselves just waiting to be realized.. Both women in the novels go respectively crazy from their own inner conflict, yet without really realizing it while it is happening.

I very much look foward to seeing exactly what direction Plath has taken the novel, and whether or not the ending will be at all like the ending of Franny and Zooey. Because the context of the story is a bit different, and the narration is a bit different, I feel that the endings too will also be different. However, I think the parallels in behavior and thought pattern will continue to be similar between Esther, and Salinger's Franny.